‘D’you want it plain or fancy?’
‘It’s all right. I’m waiting for someone.’
‘Oh yeah? Squaddies only come down here for one thing.’ She moved in closer and grabbed him.
Oh Christ! She’d got his testicles in a vice-like grip.
‘Now look, soldier. Do you want it or not?’
‘If you don’t mind –’
She interrupted him. ‘Time-waster. That’s what you are. Well, I think I ought be paid for my time. That’s fair, ain’t it?’
‘If you let go I’ll see what I can do.’ She relaxed her grip, and he fished in his pockets. ‘Two bob?’
‘Two bob! Don’t hurt yourself, will you! Open up. Let’s see what you’ve got. Two half-crowns. That’s more like it. Look. I’ll give you a tremble if you want. Up to you.’
‘It’s all right,’ said Jock, glad to have his testicles back.
The woman peered into his face. ‘You all right?’ she said. ‘You smell of whisky.’
‘Do you want some?’
‘Wouldn’t mind. It’s a cold night.’ He handed her one of the bottles, and she took a healthy swig. ‘Good stuff. You sure I can’t do anything for you?’
Jock took another swig. ‘All you can do for me is fuck off, you horrible old whore.’
‘Here, hold on,’ said the woman. ‘I was trying to be nice to you. Some people …’ she grumbled.
Fortified by the drink Jock felt that he could deal with the situation. ‘Who’d want to do anything with a stinking old bag like you?’
‘What’s the matter with you? You pissed?’
‘I’ve had a drink.’
‘I should have another and wash your mouth out. Us girls have our pride, you know.’
‘Girls,’ he sneered. ‘Bloody long time since you were a girl.’
The woman sprang into action. A heavy shoe trod on Jock’s foot, and he registered a forceful knee in the groin.
‘Come down ’ere. Insulting people. Pillock!’
Jock slowly sank to his knees. ‘Please. I don’t feel well.’
The woman walked away from him. ‘Not surprised,’ she said.
The blow to his testicles had left him helpless and in agony. He knew that if he kept still it would ease in time. Something was coming up from his stomach that eventually forced its way out of his mouth. It smelt vile and dripped down his tunic top. Jock tried to get another drink, but the bottle fell from his nerveless hands. Christ! What was he doing on his fucking knees? He kept close to the pile of timber until he got to the end of the stack. There was the canal. Canal! It was wider than the Thames. He got to his feet and tried the other pocket. Ah! It was there. That was the point of the two-pocket drill. If you lost one bottle there was always another. He raised the bottle to his lips when something with bull-like force butted him in the back, and he belly-flopped into the water. He panicked. He couldn’t swim. Jock had to find something to hold on to, but everything he grabbed seemed to be floating. He opened his mouth to shout, and his top dental plate fell out.
He could see Chalkie’s face sneering at him. ‘Can’t take a joke?’ Chalkie enquired. Jock dimly realized that this was it. Instead of fighting and floundering, his muscles seemed to relax. Ah well, he was in a mess and no mistake. A pity he never fucked Ann Sheridan or Hedy Lamarr, but there had been a few. Chalkie would be pleased, the bastard.
And that was the last thought that occurred to Jock as he drowned, in the moonlight, in the Manchester Ship Canal.
12
JMMY Fossett was in a terrible state. His face was scarlet, and he was perspiring freely. The pretty nurse, whom he now knew as Peggy, had been told to give him a wash. She cleaned his face and neck and the rest of him above the plaster, but then came the tricky bit below. He thought hard about St Paul’s Cathedral, tried to visualize the uncompromising features of Winston Churchill, brought his dad and mum into focus, but however he tried he couldn’t ignore the fact that his cock was standing up like a flagpole.
‘Sorry,’ he whispered. ‘Can’t help it.’
Peggy seemed unfazed. She probably saw blokes’ cocks all day long. Got used to it. All in a day’s work. When she’d done she sprinkled talcum powder over him.
‘Thanks,’ he said hoarsely.
‘Be getting your plaster off quite soon.’
Jimmy was growing quite fond of Peggy. He might have asked her for a date, but that was out of the question now that she had seen him in such an undignified position.
There were a few soldiers on the ward, all wounded in France or Germany. They were a cheerful lot. Corporal Harry Fortune came in to see him, brought him Reveille and news of the unit. Mayer sent good wishes.
‘You’ve made a good friend there,’ said Harry.
‘What’s going to happen to him?’
‘You tell me,’ said Harry. ‘There’s got to be an investigation about the German officer in the hospital.’
‘Will I be questioned?’
‘Expect so. You’ll get an army solicitor. You’ll be all right.’
The next day Second Lieutenant Osborne arrived. He was tall and thin and spoke very posh. ‘I’d better get it all down,’ he said, producing a notebook.
‘I told everyone what happened,’ said Jimmy.
‘I need to hear it from you. Every detail. Now then, fire away. I should tell you that I’m not a proper solicitor yet, but I do work in Chambers. Not at the moment of course, but when this is all over I’ll be doing my Bar exam.’
‘Oh. Good,’ said Jimmy, all at sea with the gangling youth who didn’t seem to be much older than he was.
Osborne listened carefully to Jimmy’s account of the fatal night. ‘What happened to the bayonet?’ he asked.
‘I put it back in the scabbard.’
‘Did you clean it?
‘I had to wash it off a bit.’
‘And where is it now?’
‘Back at the barracks. It must be there somewhere. I had it when I was on guard.’
‘Did you wipe the handle? There could be fingerprints.’
It occurred to Jimmy that Osborne wasn’t as silly as he appeared. ‘Never thought of that.’
‘But why wasn’t it impounded?’
‘Eh?’
‘Why didn’t the police take it away?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘And this man – er – Mayer. What do you know about him?’
‘He’s a German prisoner.’
‘Reliable, would you say?’
Peggy came with some pills. ‘Excuse me.’
She smiled at Osborne, who stood up and apologized in a gentlemanly manner. ‘No. Really. I mustn’t interfere with his treatment.’
Peggy blushed prettily. ‘He’s all right. I think he’s having us on.’
There it was again. Peggy was responding to Osborne. He may have been an awkward clot, but he was an officer, knew his manners and was obviously upper class. Why should Peggy bother with an ordinary common-or-garden squaddie when a rung up the class ladder was beckoning?
He was miserable for the rest of the day.
Corporal George Gross (known as Gordon on his days off) had found that Flora was a willing lover. It was as though he had lit a blue touch-paper and fireworks had followed. When he went to the house she practically ordered her parents up to bed and threw herself on him, breathing into his ear, ‘We shouldn’t be doing this.’
‘I know,’ he whispered. ‘Get your knickers off.’
And she whooped with delight.
But one evening he knocked on the door and it was opened by Flora’s father. Her mother was in the sitting-room. There was no sign of Flora.
Gross took a deep breath. This was to be the reckoning.
‘Sit down, Gordon. Just wanted to have a little chat with you.’ He didn’t seem hostile.
Flora’s mother gave him a shy smile.
‘Now look, Gordon. No need to beat about the bush. We know what’s been going on. We’re not blind, are we, Min?’
Flora’s mother cast her eyes down with embarrassment, which Gross took to mean an agreement that she was not blind.
‘We’re broad-minded, aren’t we, Min?’
Flora’s mother flushed bright red. ‘For God’s sake, Henry. Get on with it.’
‘Right,’ said Flora’s father. ‘The point is – is there any future in it?’
‘I’m very careful,’ said Gross. ‘I use a thing, you know.’
‘So did he,’ said Flora’s mother. ‘That’s how we got Flora.’
‘The point is,’ continued Flora’s father, ‘do you intend to marry the girl?’
Ah! They didn’t mind him screwing their daughter before marriage as long as marriage was on the horizon.
‘You see,’ said Flora’s mother, taking the cards from her husband and laying them on the table. ‘This … war is going to be over some time. And you’ll go back to London, and Flora …’
‘Will be damaged goods,’ said the father, dredging his mind for an apt phrase and coming up with a contaminated one.
‘Well, I don’t know. This spell in the army. It’s stopped me doing anything proper. I intend to apply to RADA when this is all over. Everything has been put on hold.’
‘Yes. I can see that, but where does that leave Flora? You don’t mind me speaking frankly. She is our only child.’
‘And whose fault is that?’ said Flora’s mother, wistfully, and then, ‘Will you be here for Christmas?’
‘Christmas?’ said Gross, bewildered at the turn in the conversation.
‘Yes. We’ll have relatives coming. It’d be nice if we could introduce you as Flora’s young man.’
‘What?’ he laughed. ‘Just for Christmas? Look,’ he said, more serious now, ‘I like Flora very much, but I have no plans. How could I? The war’s not over yet. Then I’ve got to get demobbed and find some way of supporting myself.’
‘What did you do before?’
‘I worked in a shop. A big shop. In London.’
‘There’s big shops in Manchester,’ pointed out Flora’s mother.
‘It’s no good,’ Gross said. ‘I can’t tie myself down.’
‘In that case,’ said the father, ‘I think you’d better stop seeing my daughter.’
‘Isn’t that up to her?’
‘She’s not twenty-one yet.’
And that seemed to put the lock and key on the situation.
The Major had hardly spoken to the Medical Officer since the incident with Mrs Grantley. They maintained the formality of the Officers’ Mess, a room that had seen some high jinks with young subalterns being plied with drinks for the amusement of their superiors. But now it was just the two of them. They ate their meals in silence. Martin didn’t seem the least put out about the incident with Grace Grantley.
‘What do you intend to do about the German prisoner?’ he asked.
‘He’s in the guardroom,’ the Major replied.
‘Yes, but he doesn’t need medical attention any more. Shouldn’t he be transferred to a POW camp?’
The Major didn’t appear to be listening or, if he were, was not prepared to give any attention to the matter. ‘How’s Gryce?’
‘I don’t know. I haven’t seen her, since …’
‘Have you been round – for bridge?’
‘I don’t play bridge,’ said Martin. ‘Look,’ he said brutally, ‘the poor woman wanted something that you weren’t prepared to give …’
‘It’s all right. I know. Don’t you find life a bit – stark sometimes?’
‘You can’t avoid reality.’
‘I know. D’you know, Martin, I’ve never had any appetite for that sort of thing. It must be just me. Everybody else seems to get on with it.’
‘Something in your childhood I expect.’
‘Oh hell,’ said the Major. ‘I don’t want one of those trick cyclists poking around in my subconscious. God knows what he might turn up.’
Martin poured another brandy. ‘I’m glad we’ve had this conversation. Clear the air. We all have our demons. I was at Dunkirk, you know. I’m afraid it all got too much for me. I just didn’t seem to be able to cope …’ He trailed off. ‘Can’t get it out of my mind.’ There was a crack in his voice.
The Major looked at him dispassionately. ‘You feel you let yourself down?’
‘Yes,’ said Martin. His face was flushed, his eyes misty. ‘You don’t know anything about yourself until you are tested.’ He looked down. ‘You wouldn’t understand. You’re a different material. Anyway Grace doesn’t want me. She wants you. Fine woman. If you could just relax a bit …’
The Major looked stunned. He had never had this level of frank conversation with anybody.
There was a knock on the door. Harry came in. ‘The police want to speak to you about Private Patterson.’
The Major was relieved at the interruption. God knows what further embarrassments might have followed. ‘What’s the matter with him?’
‘He’s been found in the canal. Drowned.’
‘What! Is there no end to this string of catastrophes?’
The Major had to report the matter to HQ and write a letter to Jock’s parents.
‘Will the funeral be here, sir?’ Harry asked. ‘Or will they take him back to Glasgow?’
‘If I know anything they’ll want him back in Glasgow,’ said Martin. ‘Very clannish, the Scots.’
‘What the devil was he doing down there anyway?’
‘He’d been drinking, sir.’
‘Christ knows what goes on in men’s minds,’ said the Major.
‘Just as well,’ said Captain Martin.
Harry was aimlessly scuffing around the back streets of Salford. He found himself feeling increasingly aimless these days. His mind kept turning over the prospects of living the rest of his life in London with Renee and the kids when his heart was in Blackpool with Joan. He had to make a decision, and he knew that whichever he decided he would feel bad about it.
Out of habit he found himself poking around in a secondhand shop. It was what he did with the Major. Salford was a depressed area. The buildings were broken and black, the houses hunched, old and primitive. The people walked about with their eyes staring at the cobbled pavements, as though they had the cares of the world on their shoulders. There were places in London that were run-down but nothing like this. The poverty seemed ingrained; handed down from one generation to the next. If you were born here you were doomed.
It was funny news about Jock. Had he thrown himself in? Was it, in fact, suicide? That he couldn’t live with himself after he’d ratted on Chalkie? Anyway, they were scum. Both of them. Not worth a bucket of cold piss. Selfish bragging bastards. The world would be a better place without Chalkie and Jock.
He came across an old cardboard box. He opened it up. It was full of lead toy soldiers. Must have been thirty or forty of them. All guardsmen, with busbies and red tunics, with rows of buttons. Some had side drums, one a big drum. Then there were euphonium players, bugles, trombones and one with a mace. He was the drum major.
Harry stood them up in order on a suitcase. Christmas was only weeks away. He knew he would get leave. Married men had the preference. Young Tommy wasn’t really old enough to appreciate the troop of lead soldiers, but he would be in time. On the other hand, these were not fighting soldiers; had no relevance to the army of today. There were no rifles, no Bren guns, no Vickers machine-guns, no drab uniforms, no gas-masks, no bastards like Chalkie and Jock. This was what the public saw. On parade, marching grandly down the Mall, stomping up and down outside Buckingham Palace or St James. A glamorized version of grinding boredom. The reality was four men crouched around a blanket on the floor playing brag. Someone ought to take a picture of that scene. ‘This is me. In action. I’m the one who’s just about to scoop the pool!’
He found the proprietor, a stout lady in a flowered pinafore. He beckoned to the soldiers. ‘How much?’
She looked at him. ‘I’ve got a boy of mine over there.
Give us five bob.’
‘Ain’t got it. I can give you half a crown.’
The woman looked disgusted. Having thrown her son into the equation she expected better than this. ‘For your boy?’
He nodded.
‘Go on then. Want something for the wife?’ she said, completely ignoring the fiction that he only had half a crown to spend.
There was an oval box. Inside there was the figure of a ballerina, costumed for Swan Lake. There was a key on the platform where she posed, on pointe. When you wound it up there was a low but distinctive tinkling noise, and the figure twirled a bit. It was cheap and tawdry, no doubt mass-produced in some sweat-shop in Japan a few years earlier, but it had its charm.
‘How much?’ he said.
‘To you?’ she said archly.
He knew its worth, but he wanted it. Not for itself but for the fact that it represented an angel found at the bottom of a pile of slimy rubbish. ‘Two bob,’ he offered.
‘You’re a hard man, soldier.’
‘It’s the army that’s done it to me.’ He paid the two shillings and slipped the box into his pocket. He went out to the street and followed the parade of the downtrodden to the bus stop. When he got off the bus he went into the nearest pub.
‘Harry!’
It was Betsy, the daughter of the Betsy and May menagerie.
‘Hello, stranger.’
She seemed to be bigger, more buxom than he remembered. Her face garish with makeup, her breasts threatening to burst out from their thin covering. She might have been in a pantomime, as the Widow Twankey.
‘Watcha got there?’ she enquired, pointing to the parcel under his arm. ‘A present? For me?’
‘No. It’s for my kid.’
‘You can buy me a drink,’ she said, pouting grotesquely.
He experienced a wave of absolute disgust. How could he have gone to bed with this caricature of womanhood? Christ! He must have been desperate. Of course she didn’t look so bad in the dark. ‘I’ve got to go,’ he said.
‘Gone off me, have you?’
‘I’m going to get some chips.’
‘Please yourself. I know when I’m not wanted.’
He left the pub and made his way back. He thought about getting the bus, but he decided to walk. He needed to work off the fury he felt.
Long and the Short Page 17
